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Upcoming Events

A Christmas Carol

Nineteenth-century London comes to life when your family joins the SCR family for the holidays. Recapture the spirit of an old-fashioned Christmas with this timeless Dickens classic and all your favorite...

The Roommate

Sharon is sensible. An Iowan. An empty nester. Curious and very, very talkative. For the first time in her life, at age 54, she takes in a roommate to make ends meet. Robyn, a new arrival from the Bronx, is hiding a lifetime of secrets. But Sharon has a way of...

Moby Dick

adapted and directed by David Catlin
based on the novel by Herman Melville
West Coast Premiere

The power—and the poetry—of Melville’s colossal novel is transformed into a masterwork for the stage. Driven on by a self-destructive madman, larger-than-life characters search for the white whale, pitting themselves against...

Flora & Ulysses

a play by John Glore
adapted from the book by Kate DiCamillo
directed by Casey Stangl
WORLD PREMIERE

Holy Bagumba! Ten-year-old Flora loves comic books, so it’s no surprise to her when a squirrel named Ulysses gets sucked up in the vacuum cleaner and pops out as a superhero who can fly—and write poetry. Doubting...

Orange

Leela is different. A teenager from India, she sketches life’s important moments in her journal. When a family wedding gets boring, her rebellious cousin decides to make a run for it with her boyfriend—and take Leela along. As they...

The Siegel

Ethan Siegel is in love. Tonight he’s going to ask Alice’s parents for permission to marry her. There’s just one hitch. Ethan and Alice broke up two years ago—and she’s in a serious relationship with someone else. But Ethan is undaunted. An irresistible comedy about modern love and the need to go back in order to move...

A Doll's House, Part 2

In the final scene of Ibsen’s classic A Doll’s House, Nora makes the shocking decision to leave her husband and children. A door slams. The curtain falls on a stunned audience. Lucas Hnath continues Nora’s story in this intriguing play with a decidedly modern perspective. Fifteen years have...

The Monster Builder

Rita and Dieter are thrilled to meet Gregor, the world’s most celebrated architect. His buildings rise from the earth like twisted post-post-modern megaliths. So why has he taken on the remodel of a decaying boathouse, a project that was supposed to go to Rita and Dieter? They’re ready for a...

Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

Judy Blume’s enormously popular book hits the stage with hilarity, and sibling rivalry never has been so much fun. Well, two-year-old Fudge is having fun, and so is the audience. Big brother Peter has had enough, and when his turtle ends up in Fudge’s tummy,...

Destiny of Desire

On a stormy night in Bellarica, Mexico, two baby girls are born—one to poverty, one to privilege—and then secretly switched by a scheming former beauty queen. Eighteen years later the girls meet, brought together by misfortune. Or is it destiny? In...

All the Way

1963. Lyndon B. Johnson has been catapulted into the most powerful job on earth. No stranger to back room deals, Johnson takes us with him—flattering, backslapping, placating and bullying as he maneuvers to pass the groundbreaking Civil Rights Act. From Martin Luther King, Jr. to...

Amadeus

Swelling with the glorious music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, this psychological mystery has played to thunderous applause the world over. The New York Post raved that its Broadway premiere was “a total, iridescent triumph.” Vienna, 1781: the city of drama, intrigue and scandal...

Pacific Playwrights Festival - Staged Readings

Launched in 1998, South Coast Repertory’s annual Pacific Playwrights Festival (PPF) is a major national showcase for new plays. The 19th festival in April 2016 will bring the total number of plays presented in PPF to 123, including many that have become mainstays of contemporary American theatre. Each year’s three-day festival attracts...

Office Hour

He sits in the back of the classroom, wearing dark glasses, a baseball cap pulled down low…never speaking. His creative writing assignments are violent, twisted—and artless. He scares the other students. He scares the teachers. The kid is trouble. Or...

Future Thinking

Chiara is a spoiled starlet. Peter is a pet photographer. He’s also Chiara’s obsessed, middle-aged stalker-fan, who believes there’s another dimension, where he and Chiara can live happily. It’s Comic Con time, and Peter’s in trouble. He has violated his restraining order...

Going to a Place where you Already Are

Is there a heaven? Joe says no; it’s all a bunch of hokum. His wife, Roberta, has always claimed to agree. But lately she’s beginning to wonder, especially when they find themselves in church a lot, having reached the age when funerals are more frequent than weddings. Their...

Red

“What do you see?” Mark Rothko, abstract expressionist, living legend and uncompromising bad boy asks Ken, his seemingly naïve new assistant. It’s 1958, and Rothko is at the height of his glory. In a converted gym deep in New York City’s Bowery, he has begun work on the biggest...

Madwoman in the Volvo, The

In ancient times, tribal women went alone to caves during menopause. Today, the 50 millions menopausal women in America turn to cheery self-help books. As for Loh and her friends, they are determined not to go quietly into their sixth decade but instead opt for a desert festival of...

Abundance

1860. A stagecoach pulls into a station in the middle of the Wyoming Territory. Off step two mail-order brides, one innocent and wide-eyed, the other spunky and assertive. For the next quarter of a century, they struggle with the incongruities of fate while clinging to their...

Vietgone

An all-American love story about two very new Americans. It’s 1975, and Saigon has fallen. He lost his wife. She lost her fiancé. But now in a new land, they just might find each other. Using his uniquely infectious style The New York Times calls “culturally savvy comedy”—and skipping...

Kikiricaja: Una Historia de Payasos

Loosely translated as “Cock-a-doodle-doo Box: A History of Clowns,” Kikiricaja: Una Historia de Payasos is a three-person play, performed entirely in Spanish, that tells the story of friends Bartolomeus and Comino, who live in beautiful wooden boxes where they dream, eat, play and invent worlds. Full of moments of happiness and...

How to Be a Rock Critic

by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen
performed by Erik Jensen
directed by Jessica Blank

Manic. Impossibly creative. Dead of an overdose at 33. Gonzo journalist Lester Bangs was America’s greatest rock critic and the first missionary of the movement he dubbed “punk.” His faith was shattered as the rebel ethos of the...

BIG SHOT: a.k.a. this is not The Godfather

created by Theatre Movement Bazaar
directed and choreographed by Tina Kronis
text by Richard Alger

BIG SHOT is a vaudevillian theatrical collage inspired by The Godfather films and novel. The Godfather is an iconic story; the novel and subsequent motion pictures have had significant international cultural influence. Its...

Mr. Wolf

When Rajiv Joseph puts pen to paper, he ignites the theatre world. He has thrilled audiences with plays like the Broadway hit Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, and now comes his most provocative drama yet—a psychological mystery that will keep you...

Of Good Stock

by Melissa Ross
Directed by Gaye Taylor Upchurch
WORLD PREMIERE
SCR New Play Commission

Legendary novelist Mick Stockton left his three daughters a house in Cape Cod, control over his books and a whole lot of issues. Years later, the men in their lives struggle to be part of this elusive family’s...

tokyo fish story

by Kimber Lee
directed by Bart DeLorenzo
WORLD PREMIERE
On the Julianne Argyros Stage

Koji is a Sushi Master with an undying love for his art. But his restaurant is declining while the new place down the street keeps packing them in. Takashi represents the younger generation—a brilliant...

A Christmas Carol

Nineteenth-century London comes to life when your family joins the SCR family for the holidays. Recapture the spirit of an old-fashioned Christmas with this timeless Dickens classic and all your favorite characters—Tiny Tim and the Cratchit family, the Fezziwigs, the Ghosts of Christmas past, present and yet-to-come—and, as always,...

Charlotte's Web

Shhh! Listen to the sounds of morning! They tell of something exciting that happened during the night. A pig was born. His name is Wilbur. And he’s destined to become tomorrow’s bacon—until a spider with amazing skills hatches a plan. This beloved children’s fable about love and friendship comes alive...

Zealot

A world premiere play by Theresa Rebeck. Directed by Marc Masterson. The location: Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The story: The British consul pours tea for the American undersecretary of state, avoiding her questions—with answers to ones she hasn’t even asked. (Diplomacy at work.) In the street below, a group of Saudi women sets in motion a...

Venus in Fur

Auditions are over for the day, and Thomas still hasn’t found the perfect actress for his adaptation of a 19th century erotic novel. [Thunder clap!] Vanda stumbles into the bare rehearsal studio, soaking wet and hours late. Before he can stop her, Vanda strips down to...

The Long Road Today / El Largo Camino de Hoy

For the last two years, nearly 1,000 Santa Ana residents have gathered to share their stories and memories. Their words and experiences inspired a powerful and touching new play about community, hope and healing. A cast and crew of nearly 100 residents from all walks of life will bring the story to life through theatre, music and dance in...

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Media Reviews

Like Citizen Kane’s Rosebud and the avian statue in The Maltese Falcon, the woman after whom Gina Gionfriddo’s sharply written 2009 comedy Becky Shaw is titled is a MacGuffin, a device that triggers the central thrust of the plot but is ultimately le…
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Like Citizen Kane’s Rosebud and the avian statue in The Maltese Falcon, the woman after whom Gina Gionfriddo’s sharply written 2009 comedy Becky Shaw is titled is a MacGuffin, a device that triggers the central thrust of the plot but is ultimately less important than the people it affects. Becky, who arrives late in the first act, seems to lack a real identify, her words and actions merely reflections of the light generated by the two characters about whom Gionfriddo truly cares: Suzanna, a touchingly neurotic graduate student of psychology, and Max, her adopted brother and the person entrusted with taking care of her financially after the death of their father.